Teenager To Spend Life in Prison For Shootings

By SAM HOWE VERHOVEK

Published: November 11, 1999

SEATTLE, Nov. 10—
Seventeen-year-old Kip Kinkel was sentenced to spend the rest of his life in prison today, shortly after the Oregon teenager read an apology for the shooting rampage he went on last year that left his parents and two fellow high school students dead and nearly two dozen people injured.

''I absolutely loved my parents and had no reason to kill them,'' Mr. Kinkel, who was 15 at the time of the May 1998 shooting, told a courtroom in Eugene, Ore., this morning. ''I had no reason to dislike or try to kill anyone at Thurston. I am truly sorry for all of this.'' Still reading from a small sheet of white paper, he added, ''These events have pulled me to a state of deterioration and self-loathing that I didn't know existed.''

Today's sentence, which totals more than 111 years in prison without the possibility of parole, came after several emotional days of testimony, including ones in which injured victims or relatives of the dead spoke of the continuing pain and nightmares caused by the attack and pleaded that Mr. Kinkel be locked up for life.

Testifying for the defense, which plans to appeal today's sentence, a Portland psychiatrist said last week that Mr. Kinkel never would have turned violent had his mental illness been recognized earlier and treated.

''For three years, he was fighting off an illness and no one knew it,'' said Dr. William Sack, a specialist in child and adolescent psychiatry at Oregon Health Sciences University. ''I think if he could have been under treatment with appropriate medication and appropriate follow-up, I do not think he would have gone on to commit these acts.''

But Judge Jack Mattison, in his ruling today, said the testimony had left him convinced that a jury would have found Mr. Kinkel guilty of several counts of aggravated murder and would have wanted him to spend his life in prison.

Judge Mattison said this morning that the sentence ''needed to account for each of the wounded, who rightly call themselves survivors, and for Mr. Kinkel to know there was a price to be paid for each person hit by his bullets.''

Kent Mortimer, a Lane County assistant district attorney and lead prosecutor in the case, said in a telephone interview today that the incident was a ''horrible, horrible event'' that had ''torn this community in many ways that can't be described.''

''We had all along been asking for a sentence where he would die in prison,'' Mr. Mortimer said. ''And that was the ruling from the court.''

Under the terms of the sentence, which can be commuted only by the governor, Mr. Kinkel is not entitled to parole.

In September, Mr. Kinkel confessed to killing his parents, Bill and Faith Kinkel, as well as 16-year-old Ben Walker and Mikael Nickolauson, 17, both students at Thurston High School in Springfield, Ore., on May 21, 1998. He also confessed to wounding 22 students, shooting at three others, and attacking a detective after his arrest. He used a semiautomatic rifle in the school cafeteria, spraying the room with about 50 rounds in a minute and a half before some students managed to wrestle him to the floor.

Some clues to Mr. Kinkel's state of mind emerged during the sentencing hearing. He was said to have told doctors that since the age of 12 he had heard voices ordering him to kill, and his journal contained passages telling of his self-loathing and fantasizing that he might blow up his school or ''walk into a pep rally with guns.'' But even the killer himself said he could not explain what happened.

''I have gone back in my mind hundreds of times and changed one detail, one small event, so this never would have happened,'' he said at today's hearings. ''I wish I could.''

The Thurston High killings were part of a wave of killings in schools by students in the last two years. It followed similar shootings in Pearl, Miss., West Paducah, Ky., and Jonesboro, Ark., and preceded by a year the killing of 12 students and a teacher at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo.

Victims and family members had little sympathy for Mr. Kinkel's descriptions of illness.

''If you believe as anyone else does in karma, it's going to come back to you,'' Laura Woodward, whose son, Kyle, suffers continuing complications from three gunshot wounds inflicted by Mr. Kinkel, said in court on Friday. '''For you to be tortured and troubled as we are is to me the final justice.

''I do have my son,'' she continued, ''but I am also left with a spirit of fear because of what you have done to us. We all have nightmares, jump at loud sounds, have a lot of paranoia that none of us had before.''

Josh Ryker, a Thurston student who helped tackle Mr. Kinkel to the floor, said: ''I hope he lives with the mental images of what he has done to us for the rest of his life. I've been rushed into an adult world that wasn't really planned.''

But Mr. Kinkel's 22-year-old sister, Kristin, had used the sentencing hearing to plead with the judge for a more lenient sentence. ''What keeps me believing in him and loving him is the fact that he is a good person that came from a good home,'' she said to the judge, reading from her statement and breaking into tears. ''I feel silly writing that, because it seems so contradictory, looking at what actually took place. However, it's the truth, and it keeps me alive.''

Mr. Kinkel's lawyer, Mark Sabitt, said in a telephone interview today that he was ''profoundly disappointed'' in the judge's decision. ''He's a sick kid, but he's not a throwaway,'' Mr. Sabitt said. ''He deserves some hope for the future.''

Photos: Kipland Kinkel, at his booking, apologized in court yesterday. (Associated Press); Adam Walker, left, whose brother was killed by Kipland Kinkel, being consoled after his father went into a seizure as the sentence was read. (Pool photograph by Thomas Boyd, via The Associated Press)